Support floats for supporting swimming area demarcation ropes and fishing nets are common and well-known. Early support floats were made of wood, such as cork, or from other buoyant materials. More recently, these supports have been made from plastic materials such as polyethylene and styrene by blow molding or injecting molding techniques.
Support floats typically includes one or more parts having an opening therethrough through which a rope such as used to define swimming areas or fishing net structures is placed. In order to fix the support float on such a rope it has been common practice to include an end clamp adjacent to the opening through which a screw is positioned which passes through the rope. Also, conical wedges have been used between the rope and inner surface of the float opening through which it passes. All of the known fastening means, however, require substantial time and effort to lock the support float onto the rope. In some cases, such as in the case of the conical wedge, a float cannot be removed from the line without cutting the rope because of the permanence of such wedge structure. This is a significant disadvantage when a large number of floats are to be positioned and secured to a line or fishing net or where damaged support floats must be replaced.
It is, therefore, an object to the present invention to provide a support float which will lock onto a rope or similar means without the necessity of fastening devices such as screws, wedges or the like. It is also an object of the present invention to provide a support float which is susceptible of blow molding techniques and which will retain its buoyancy for substantial periods of time. Accordingly, it is the object of the present invention to overcome the many disadvantages associated with prior art support float structures.